Chinese migrant mothers share secrets

“I don’t want my life to be like that of a snail, carrying my home wherever I go. I want my own sky, unlike a kite, unable to decide its own direction. (Opening song of Chinese play, as reported by sixthtone.com)

In Beijing, a group of female migrant workers shared secrets and struggles drawn from their lives as migrant mothers in “Maternity Chronicle,” a new play performed in the city’s Xicheng District in May 2019. The painful experiences of the play’s Chinese migrant mothers resonate in similar communities all over the world.

By the end of 2018, there were more than 288 million migrant workers in cities across China, and about 35% of whom were women. Many live lonely lives in precarious circumstances, alienated from the social support provided by village life, but unable to fully integrate into the big cities where they work long hours and face economic, social, and structural barriers. Of course, internal rural-urban migration has essentially the same impact on children left behind and the mothers who leave as out-migration to foreign countries.

As reported by the Chinese website sixthtone.com, the “testimonial” play centers on Xiaoyu, who comes from a rural village in southwestern China. She gets married and has her first child in 1990, when she as just 17. The play opens when she is still in the countryside and facing her third pregnancy — an unexpected one, due to the expulsion of her contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD). At a local clinic, she faces a dilemma: The family has two sons and cannot afford another child, but she also cannot afford to take any time off from farming.

By the time the wheat harvest is complete, Xiaoyu is so far along that the abortion can only be performed by inducing labor.

Xiaoyu’s story emerged from a series of discussions organized by Mulan Community Service Center, an organization supporting female migrant workers in Beijing. The character of Xiaoyu represents China’s first generation of migrant workers, born in the 1970s or earlier. The shift between their identities as farmers in the countryside and workers in the cities complicate their lives. Some of these migrant mothers moved with their families to industrialized cities to find work, while others left their children behind in rural villages with relatives, usually with grandparents.

For more on “Maternity Chronicle” and Beijing’s Mulan Community Service, please click on this link: I Want My Own Sky.

(Written and posted by Carol J. Kelly)